Policy Briefs

May 05, 2003

Economy hurts states

With American cities slashing nearly 650,000 jobs during the past year and having to cut spending — a situation affecting first responders and technology projects — Boston Mayor Thomas Menino called on President Bush to convene an economic summit in the next 60 days to develop a revitalization plan.

Menino, who also is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, focused on economic recovery and homeland security during a speech April 30 at the National Press Club. He said the national economic summit should include mayors, governors, congressional and labor leaders, and university presidents.

GAO issues EA guide

With American cities slashing nearly 650,000 jobs during the past year and having to cut spending — a situation affecting first responders and technology projects — Boston Mayor Thomas Menino called on President Bush to convene an economic summit in the next 60 days to develop a revitalization plan.

Menino, who also is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, focused on economic recovery and homeland security during a speech April 30 at the National Press Club. He said the national economic summit should include mayors, governors, congressional and labor leaders, and university presidents.

The General Accounting Office has issued a guide for assessing and improving enterprise architectures that is intended to help agencies manage their efforts in the area. GAO has consistently identified "the lack of an architecture as a major management weakness," according to the guide.

It updates GAO's enterprise architecture management maturity framework, which the agency issued in February 2002. The new version, which GAO has dubbed Version 1.1, contains 31 core elements of effective enterprise management. Among them:

* An organization should have adequate resources — funding, people, tools and technology — to establish and manage its architecture.

* An organization should designate a qualified person to be chief architect, responsible and accountable for the architecture.

* An organization should be able to measure and report on the plan's progress.

* An organization should have plans for developing metrics to track progress, quality, compliance and return on investment.